From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map of the Eastern Bloc

The terms Eastern Bloc, Communist
Bloc or Soviet Bloc were used to refer to
the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe,
including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and
Albania,[1][2] which
were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960
respectively.[3][4]

From 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding
Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential
Soviet annexation and control of countries in Eastern Europe.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Soviet policy
regarding Eastern Europe differed vastly from that of American
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the
former believing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant
leading a vile system.[33]
When warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over
part of Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing
his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that
Stalin is not that kind of a man. . . . I think that if I give him
everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return,
noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with
me for a world of democracy and peace."[34]
While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in
1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in
restoring Poland as an
independent country.[35]
Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a
source of inter-allied friction.[35]

In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a
Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern Europe.[36]
Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to
dismember Germany.[36]
Stalin stated that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of
eastern Poland they had already taken via invasion in 1939,
and wanted a pro-Soviet Polish government in power in what would
remain of Poland.[36]
After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a
re-organization of the current pro-Soviet
government on a broader democratic basis in Poland.[36]
He stated that the new government's primary task would be to
prepare elections.[37]
The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated
Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create
democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to the "the
right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which
they will live."[38]
The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim
governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through
free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such
elections."[38]
At the beginning of the July–August 1945 Potsdam
Conference after Germany's unconditional surrender, Stalin
repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from
a "sovietization" of Eastern Europe.[39]
In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which
would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from
conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative
limitation.[40]
A clause was added permitting this to occur with some
limitations.[40]

Formation of Eastern
Bloc

When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov expressed worry
that the Yalta Agreement's wording might impede Stalin's plans in
Eastern Europe, Stalin responded "Never mind. We'll do it our own
way later."[41]
After Soviet forces remained in Eastern and Central European
countries, with the beginnings of communist puppet regimes installed in those
countries, Churchill referred to the region as being behind an "Iron Curtain" of
control from Moscow.[42] At
first, many Western countries condemned the speech as warmongering,
though many historians have now revised their opinions.[43]
Members of the Eastern Bloc besides the Soviet Union are sometimes
referred to as "satellite states"
of the Soviet
Union.[44
][45][46][47][48][49][50]

Initial
control process

The initial problem in countries occupied by the Red Army in
1944–45 was how to transform occupation power into control of
domestic development.[51]
Because communists were small minorities in all countries but
Czechoslovakia,[52]
they were initially instructed to form coalitions in their
respective countries.[53]
At the war's end, concealment of the Kremlin's role was considered crucial to
neutralize resistance and to make the regimes appear not only
autochthonous, but also to resemble "bourgeois democracies".[52]
Soviet takeover of control at the outset generally followed a three
stage "bloc politics" process: (i) a general coalition of
left-wing, antifascist forces; (ii) a bogus coalition in which the
communists neutralized those in other parties who were not willing
to accept communist supremacy; and (iii) complete communist
domination, frequently exercised in a new party formed by the
fusion of communist and other leftist groups.[54]

Property
relocation

By the end of World War Two, most of Eastern Europe, and the
Soviet Union in particular, suffered vast destruction.[55]
The Soviet Union had suffered a staggering 27 million deaths, and
the destruction of significant industry and infrastructure, both by
the Nazi Wehrmacht and
the Soviet Union itself in a "scorched Earth"
policy to keep it from falling in Nazi hands as they advanced over
1,000 miles to within 15 miles of Moscow.[55]
Thereafter, the Soviet Union physically transported and relocated
east European industrial assets to the Soviet Union.[55]
This was especially pronounced in eastern European Axis
countries, such as Romania and Hungary, where such a policy was
considered as punitive reparations (a principle accepted by Western
powers).[56]
In some cases, Red Army
officers viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to
looting.[57] Other
Eastern Bloc states were required to provide coal, industrial
equipment, technology, rolling stock and other resources to
reconstruct the Soviet Union.[58]
Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviets received a net transfer of
resources from the rest of the Eastern Bloc under this policy
roughly comparable to the net transfer from the United States to
western Europe in the Marshall Plan.[58]

East
Germany

The red area of Germany (above) is Soviet controlled East Germany. The
Soviets ceded the portion to the east of the Oder-Neisse
line (light beige) to Poland, while a portion of the isolated
easternmost section of German East Prussia, Königsberg, was annexed directly into the USSR

Most of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, which contained much
of Germany's fertile land, was transferred to what remained of
unilaterally Soviet-controlled Poland.[59]
At the end of World War II, political opposition immediately
materialized after occupying Soviet army personnel conducted
systematic pillaging and rapes in their zone of then divided
Germany,[60]
with total rape victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to
two million.[61][62][63]

In a June 1945 meeting, Stalin told German communist leaders in
the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany that he expected to slowly
undermine the British position within the British occupation zone,
that the United States would withdraw within a year or two and that
nothing then would stand in the way of a united Germany under
communist control within the Soviet orbit.[64]
Stalin and other leaders told visiting Bulgarian and Yugoslavian
delegations in early 1946 that Germany must be both Soviet and
communist.[64]
Factories, equipment, technicians, managers and skilled personnel
were forcibly transferred to the Soviet Union.[60]
In the non-annexed remaining portion of Soviet-controlled East Germany, like in
the rest of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the major task of the
ruling communist party was to channel Soviet orders down to both
the administrative apparatus and the other bloc parties pretending
that these were initiatives of its own.[65]
At the direction of Stalin, Soviet authorities forcibly unified the
Communist Party of Germany
and Social Democratic
Party in the SED, claiming at the
time that it would not have a Marxist-Leninist
or Soviet orientation.[66]
The SED won a first narrow election victory in Soviet-zone
elections in 1946, even though Soviet authorities oppressed
political opponents and prevented many competing parties from
participating in rural areas.[67]
Property and industry were nationalized under their government.[66][68] If
statements or decisions deviated from the prescribed line,
reprimands and, for persons outside public attention, punishment
would ensue, such as imprisonment, torture and even death.[65]
Indoctrination of Marxism-Leninism became a compulsory part of
school curricula, sending professors and students fleeing to the
west.[69]
Applicants for positions in the government, the judiciary and
school systems had to pass ideological scrutiny.[69]
An elaborate political police apparatus kept the population under
close surveillance,[69]
including Soviet SMERSH secret
police.[66]
A tight system of censorship restricted access to print or the
airwaves.[69]

What remained of non-communist SED opposition parties were also
infiltrated to exploit their relations with their "bourgeois"
counterparts in western zones to support Soviet unity along Soviet
lines, while a "National
Democratic" party (NDPD) was created to attract former Nazis
and professional military personnel in order to rally them behind
the SED.[70]
In early 1948, during the Tito-Stalin
split, the SED underwent a transformation into an authoritarian
party dominated by functionaries subservient to Moscow.[71]
Important decisions had to be cleared with the
CPSU Central Committee apparatus or even with Stalin
himself.[65]
By early 1949, the SED was now capped by a Soviet-style Politburo
that was effectively a small self-selecting inner circle.[71]
The German
Democratic Republic was declared on October 7, 1949, within
which the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs accorded the East
German state administrative authority, but not autonomy, with an
unlimited Soviet exercise of the occupation regime and Soviet
penetration of administrative, military and secret police
structures.[72][73]

Poland

Eastern Poland (grey) was annexed directly into the USSR, while most of Germany
east of the Oder-Neisse line (pink) was ceded to
what remained of Poland (white), both of which would comprise the
newly created People's Republic of
Poland

After the Soviet invasion of German-occupied Poland in July
1944, Polish government-in-exile
prime minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk flew to
Moscow with Churchill to argue against the annexation of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portion of eastern Poland by the Soviet
Union.[37]
Poland served as the first real test of American President Roosevelt's Soviet policy of
"giving" to Stalin assuming noblesse oblige,[74]
with Roosevelt telling Mikołajczyk before the visit, "Don't worry.
Stalin doesn't intend to take freedom from you" and after assuring
U.S. backing, concluding "I shall see to it that your country does
not come out of this war injured."[75]
Mikołajczyk offered a smaller section of land, but Stalin declined,
telling him that he would allow the exiled government to
participate in the Polish Committee of
National Liberation (PKWN and later "Lublin Committee"),[37]
which consisted of communists and satellite parties set up under
the direct control by the Soviet plenipotentiary Colonel-GeneralNikolai Bulganin.[76]
An agreement was reached at the Yalta Conference permitting the
annexation of most of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact portion of
Eastern Poland, while granting Poland part of East Germany in
return.[37][77]
Thereafter, the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet
Socialist Republic were expanded to include eastern Poland.[37][78][79]
The Soviet Union then compensated what remained of Poland by ceding
to it the portion of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse
line, which contained much of Germany's fertile land.[37][59]
An agreement was reached at Yalta that the Soviets' Provisional
Government made up of PKWN members would be reorganized "on a
broad democratic basis" including the exiled government, and that
the reorganized government's primary task would to be prepare for
elections.[38][80]

Pretending that it was an indigenous body representing Polish
society, the PKNW took the role of a governmental authority and
challenged the pre-World War II Polish government-in-exile
in London.[76]
Doubts began to arise whether the "free and unfettered elections"
promised at the Yalta conference
would occur.[81]
Non-communists and partisans, including those that fought the
Nazis, were systematically persecuted.[76]
Hopes for a new free start were immediately dampened when the PKWN
claimed they were entitled to choose who they wanted to take part
in the government, and the Soviet NKVD seized sixteen Polish underground leaders who
had wanted to participate in negotiations on the reorganization in
March 1945 brought them to the Soviet Union for a show trial in June.[80][81]

A communist propaganda photo of a citizen reading the PKWN Manifesto,
issued on July 22, 1944

Line waiting to enter a store, a typical view in Poland in 1950s and
1980s.

While underground leaders were sentenced to long prison terms,
assurances that political prisoners would be released and that
Soviet forces and security would leave failed to be supported by
concrete safeguards or implementation plans.[82]
Polish government-in-exile figures, including Stanisław Mikołajczyk
then returned to a popular reception, and were able to lure several
parties to their cause, effectively undermining Bloc politics.[83]
Stalin then directed that Mikołajczyk's Polish People's Party (PSL) must
accept just one fourth of parliamentary mandated seats, or else
repressions and political isolation would ensue.[84]
Polish Communists, led by Władysław Gomułka and Bolesław
Bierut, were aware of the lack of support for their side,
especially after the failure of a referendum for policies known as
"3 times YES" (3
razy TAK; 3xTAK), where less than a third of Poland's
population voted in favor of the proposed changes included massive
communist land reforms and nationalizations of industry.[85] When
the Mikołajczyk's People's Party (PPP) continued to resist pressure
to renounce a ticket of its own outside the communist party bloc,
it was exposed to open terror,[81][84]
including the disqualification of PPP candidates in one quarter of
the districts and the arrest of over 1000,000 PPP activists,[86]
followed by vote
rigging that resulted in Gomułka's communists winning a
majority in the carefully controlled poll.[87][88][89]

Mikołajczyk lost hope and left the country.[84]
His followers were subjected to unlimited ruthless persecution.[84]
Following the forged referendum, in October 1946, the new
government nationalized all enterprises employing
over 50 people and all but two banks.[81][90]
Public opposition had been essentially crushed by 1946, but
underground activity still existed.[91]Fraudulent Polish
elections held in January 1947 resulted in Poland's official
transformation to a non-democratic communist state by 1949, the People's Republic of
Poland. Resistance fighters continued to battle Communists in
the Ukrainian annexed portions of eastern Poland, the Soviet
response to which included the arrest of as many as 600,000 people
between 1944 and 1952, with about one third executed and the rest
imprisoned or exiled.[92]

Hungary

After occupying Hungary, the
Soviets imposed harsh conditions allowing it to seize important
material assets and control internal affairs.[93]
During those occupations, an estimated 50,000 women and girls were
raped.[94][95]
After the Red Army set up police organs to persecute class enemies,
the Soviets assumed that the impoverished Hungarian populace would
support communists in coming elections.[96]
The communists were trounced, receiving only 17% of the vote,
resulting in a coalition
government under Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy.[97]
Soviet intervention, however, resulted in a government that
disregarded Tildy, placed communists in important ministries, and
imposed restrictive and repressive measures, including banning the
victorious Independent
Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party.[96]
The Communist Party repeatedly wrested small concessions from
opponents in a process named "salami tactics".[98]
Battling the initial postwar political majority in Hungary ready to
establish a democracy,[99]
Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi invented the term, which
described his tactic slicing up enemies like pieces of salami.[100] In
1945, Soviet MarshalKliment
Voroshilov forced the freely elected Hungarian government to
yield the Interior Ministry to a nominee of the Hungarian Communist Party.
Communist Interior Minister László Rajk established the ÁVH secret police, which
suppressed political opposition through intimidation, false
accusations, imprisonment and torture.[101]

In early 1947, the Soviets pressed Rákosi to take a "line of
more pronounced class struggle."[91]
The People's Republic of
Hungary was formed thereafter. At the height of his rule,
Rákosi developed a strong cult of personality.[102]
Dubbed the “bald murderer,” Rákosi imitated Stalinist political and
economic programs, resulting in Hungary experiencing one of the
harshest dictatorships in Europe.[99][103] He
described himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple"[102]
and "Stalin's best pupil."[104]
Repression was harsher in Hungary than in the other satellite
countries in the 1940s and 1950s due to a more vehement Hungarian
resistance.[99]
Approximately 350,000 Hungarian officials and intellectuals were
purged from 1948 to 1956.[99]
Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the
east, or were executed, including ÁVH founder László Rajk.[105][106]
Repeated collectivizations in
Hungary occurred from the 1940s through the 1960s.[107]
Nearly a decade after stricter state control following the Soviet
invasion suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of
1956 (including the execution of leader Imre Nagy), Goulash Communism was introduced
permitting the easing of some restrictions.

Bulgaria

On September 5, 1944, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria under the pretense
that Bulgaria was to be prevented from assisting Germany and
allowing the Wehrmacht to use its territory.[108]
Four days later, the Red Army crossed the border and created the
conditions for a communist coup d' etat the
following night.[108]
The creation of a communist controlled "Fatherland Front" and an armistice
followed.[108]
The Soviet military commander in Sofia assumed
supreme authority, and the communists whom he instructed, including
Kimon
Georgiev, took full control of domestic politics.[108]
On September 8, 1946, a national
plebiscite was organized in which 96% of all votes (91% of the
population voted) for the abolishment of the monarchy and the installment of a republic.[109] In
October 1946 elections, persecution against opposition parties
occurred, such as jailing members of the previous government,
periodic newspaper publication bans and subjecting opposition
followers to frequent attacks by communist armed groups.[96]
Thereafter, the People's Republic of
Bulgaria was formed. On June 6, 1947, parliamentary leader Nikola Petkov, a
critic of communist rule,[96]
was arrested in the Parliament building, subjected to a show trial, found guilty
of espionage, sentenced to death,[110] and
hanged on September 23, 1947. The Bulgarian secret police arranged
for the publication of a false Petkov confession.[111]
The confession's false nature was so obvious that it became an
embarrassment and the authorities ceased mentioning it.[111]
Eventually Georgi Dimitrov became the first leader
of the newly-formed republic.

In 1943, Czechoslovakian leader in exile Edvard Beneš
agreed to Stalin's demands for unconditional agreement with Soviet
foreign policy, including the expulsion of over
one million Sudeten ethnic Germans identified as "rich people"
and ethnic Hungarians, directed by the Beneš
decrees.[112]
Beneš promised Stalin a "close postwar collaboration" in military
and economic affairs, including confiscation and nationalization of
large landowners' property, factories, mines, steelworks and banks
under a Czechoslovakian "national road to socialism".[112]
While Beneš was not a Moscow cadre and several domestic reforms of
other Eastern Bloc countries were not part Beneš' plan, Stalin did
not object because the plan included property expropriation and he
was satisfied with the relative strength of communists in
Czechoslovakia compared to other Eastern Bloc countries.[112]

Beneš traveled to Moscow in March 1945.[113]
After answering a list of questions by the Soviet NKVD, Beneš pleased Moscow with his plans to
deport two million ethnic Sudeten Germans and 400,000 to 600,000
Hungarian, and to build a strong army that would closely coordinate
with the Red Army.[113]
In April 1945, the Third Republic, a national front coalition ruled
by three socialist parties, was formed. Because of the Communist
Party's strength (they held 114 of 300 seats) and Beneš' loyalty,
unlike in other Eastern Bloc countries, the Kremlin did not require
Bloc politics or "reliable" cadres in Czechoslovakian power
positions, and the executive and legislative branches retained
their traditional structures.[114]
However, the Soviet Union was, at first, disappointed that the
communist party did not take advantage of their position after
receiving the most votes in 1946 elections.[115]
While they had deprived the traditional administration of major
functions by transferring local and regional government to newly
established committees in which they largely dominated, they failed
to eliminate "bourgeois" influence in the army or to expropriate
industrialists and large landowners.[116]

The existence of a somewhat independent political structure and
Czechoslovakia's initial absence of stereotypical Eastern Bloc
political and socioeconomic systems began to be seen as problematic
by Soviet authorities.[117]
While parties outside the "National Front" were excluded from the
government, they were still allowed to exist.[116]
In contrast to countries occupied by the Red Army, there were no
Soviet occupation authorities in Czechoslovakia upon whom the
communists could rely to assert a leading role.[116]

Hope in Moscow was waning for a communist victory in the
upcoming 1948 elections.[91]
A May 1947 Kremlin report concluded that "reactionary elements"
praising western democracy had strengthened.[91]
Following Czechoslovakia's brief consideration of taking Marshall Plan
funds,[116]
and the subsequent scolding of communist parties by the Cominform at Szklarska
Poręba in September 1947, Rudolf Slánský returned to Prague with a plan for the final
seizure of power, including the StB's elimination of party enemies and purging of
dissidents.[118]
In early February 1948, Communist Interior minister Václav Nosek
illegally extended his powers by attempting to purge remaining
non-Communist elements in the National Police Force.[119]
Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin arrived in Prague to arrange the Czechoslovak coup
d'état, followed by the occupation of non-Communist ministers'
ministries, while the army was confined to barracks.[120]
Communist "Action Committees" and trade union militias were quickly
set up, armed, preparing to carry through a purge of
anti-Communists, with Zorin pledging the services of the Red Army. On February 25,
1948, Beneš, fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention,
capitulated and appointed a Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia (KSČ)-dominated government under the leadership
of Stalinist Klement Gottwald, who was sworn in two
days later, ushering in a dictatorship.[121][122][123] The
only non-Communist to hold an important office, Jan Masaryk, was found
dead two weeks later.[124]
The public brutality of the Soviet-backed coup[125]
shocked Western powers more than any event before it, set in a
motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last
vestiges of opposition to United States President Truman's Marshall Plan in
the United States Congress.[126]

As the Red Army battled the Wermacht and Romanian forces in August
1944, Soviet agent Emil Bodnăraş organized an underground
coalition to stage a coup d'état that would put communists—who were
then two tiny groups—into power.[82]
However, King Michael had already organized a
coup, in which Bodnăraş also had participated, putting Michael in
power.[82]
After Soviet invasions following two years of Romania fighting with
the Axis, at the
February 1945 Yalta Conference and the July 1945 Potsdam
Conference, the western allies agreed to the Soviet absorption
of the areas.[77]
Michael accepted the Soviets' armistice terms, which included
military occupation along with the annexation of Northern
Romania.[82]
The Soviets' 1940 annexation of Bessarabia and part of Northern Bukovina to create the important
agricultural region of the Moldavian Soviet
Socialist Republic[127]
(while other Romanian territories were converted into the Chernivtsi
Oblast and Izmail Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR) became a point of tension
between Romania and the Soviet Union, especially after 1965.[128]
The Yalta
Conference also had granted the Soviet Union a predominant
interest in what remained of Romania, which coincided with the Soviet occupation of
Romania.

The Soviets organized the National Democratic Front,
which was composed of several parties including the Ploughmen's
Front.[82]
It became increasingly communist dominated.[82]
In February 1945, Soviet proponents provoked a crisis to exploit
support by the Soviet occupation power for enforcement of unlimited
control.[82]
In March 1945, Stalin aide Andre Vyshinskii traveled to Bucharest
and installed a government that included only members subservient
to the National Front.[82]
This included Ploughmen's Front member Dr. Petru Groza, who became
prime minister. Groza installed a government that included many
parties, though communists held the key ministries. The potential
of army resistance was neutralized by the removal of major troop
leaders and the inclusion of two divisions staffed with
ideologically trained prisoners of war.[82]
Bodnăraş was appointed General Secretary and initiated
reorganization of the general police and secret police.[82]

Over western allies' objections, traditional parties were
excluded from government and subjected to intensifying
persecution.[82]
Political persecution of local leaders and strict radio and press
control were designed to prepare for an eventual unlimited
communist dictatorship, including the liquidation of
opposition.[108]
When King
Michael attempted to force Groza's resignation by refusing to
sign any legislation ("the royal strike"), Groza enacted laws
without Michael's signature. In the Romanian general election
of November 1946 that the Soviets had promised the western
allies, the Romanian Communist Party (PCR)
was trounced, with U.S. embassy estimates of the bloc receiving
only about 8% of the vote compared to 70% for the rival Peasant
Party.[129]
The shocked communists asked Moscow for advice, and were told to
simply falsify the results.[129]
Forty eight hours later, they announced that the PCR bloc received
70% of the vote, setting off sharp western protests.[129]

In early 1947, Bodnăraş
reported that Romanian leaders Gheorghiu-Dej and Maurer
were seeking to bolster the Romanian economy by developing
relations with Britain and the United States and were complaining
about Soviet occupying troops.[91]
Thereafter, the PCR eliminated the role of the centrist parties,
including a show trial
of National Peasant Party leaders, and forced
other parties to merge with the PCR.[129]
By 1948, most non-Communist politicians were either executed, in
exile or in prison. The Communists declared a People's
Republic in 1948.

Albania

In December 1945, elections for the Albanian Peoples Assembly
were held, with the only ballot choices being those of the
communist Democratic Front (Albania),
led by Enver
Hoxha.[130]
Its successor, the National Liberation Front, took control of the
police, the court system and the economy, while eliminating several
hundred political opponents through a series of show trials
conducted by judges without legal training.[130]
In 1946, Albania was declared the People's
Republic of Albania and, thereafter, it broke relations with
the United States and refused to participate in the 1947 Marshall Plan.[130]
Albania's close ties with Yugoslavia lasted only until the latter's
rift with the Soviet Union in 1948.[130]
Albania was a founding member of the Warsaw Pact and was heavily dependent upon
Soviet aid.[130]
Because of Hoxha's dogmatic Stalinist adherence, Albania broke with
the Soviet Union in 1960 following the Soviet de-stalinization.[3]
Albania began to establish closer contacts with Mao Zedong's People's Republic of
China.[3]
Following Mao's death, Albania also severed ties with China in
1978.[3]

Yugoslavia

At the end of World War II, Yugoslavia was considered a victor power and
had neither an occupation force nor an allied control
commission.[131]
Communism was considered a popular alternative to the west, in
part, because of Communist partisan activity in World War II and
opposition to former Royalist Yugoslav Army leader Draža
Mihailović and King Peter.[131]
A cabinet for the new Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was formed,
with twenty five of the twenty eight members being former Communist
Yugoslav
Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito.[131]
The League of Communists of
Yugoslavia formed the National
Front of Yugoslavia coalition, with opposition members
boycotting the first election because it presented only a single
government list which could be accepted or rejected, without
opponents.[131]
Censorship, denial of publication allocations and open intimidation
of opposition groups followed.[131]
Three weeks after the election, the Front declared that a new
Republic would be formed, with a new constitution put in place two
months later in January 1946 initiating the Federal People's Republic of
Yugoslavia.[132]
The Communists continued a campaign against enemies, including
arresting Mihailović, conducting a controversial trial and then
executing him, followed by several other opposition arrests and
trials.[132]
Thereafter, a pro-Soviet phase continued until the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 and the
subsequent formation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Concealed transformation
dynamics

At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc
politics, with the transformation appearing as a modification of
western "bourgeois democracy."[133]
As a young communist was told in East Germany: "it's got to look
democratic, but we must have everything in our control."[54]
Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to
establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist-Leninist view that
material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped
social and political relations.[53]
Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to
fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation.[53]
Elimination of the bourgeoisie's social and financial power by
expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded
absolute priority.[133]
These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than
socioeconomic transformations.[133]
Except for initially in Czechoslovakia, activities by political
parties had to adhere to "Bloc politics", with parties eventually
having to accept membership in an "antifascist" "bloc" obliging
them to act only by mutual "consensus".[134]
The bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic
control indirectly.[52]
Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel,
general police, secret police and youth, were strictly communist
run.[52]
Moscow cadres distinguished "progressive forces" from "reactionary
elements", and rendered both powerless through. Such procedures
were repeated until communists had gained unlimited power, and only
politicians who were unconditionally supportive of Soviet policy
remained.[135]

Early events prompting
stricter control

Map of Cold-War era Europe showing countries that received Marshall
Plan aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid per
nation.

Marshall
Plan rejection

In June 1947, after the Soviets had refused to negotiate a
potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the
United States announced the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive program of
American assistance to all European countries wanting to
participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern
Europe.[136]
The Soviets rejected the Plan and took a hard line position against
the United States and non-communist European nations.[137]
However, of great concern to the Soviets was Czechoslovakia's
eagerness to accept the aid and indications of a similar Polish
attitude.[116]
In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region up
to that point, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was
summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering joining
the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Josef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded for the
Polish rejection of the Plan with a huge 5 year trade agreement,
including 450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy
machinery and factories.[138]

In July 1947, Stalin ordered these countries to pull out of the
Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme, which has been
described as "the moment of truth" in the post-World War II division
of Europe.[139]
Thereafter, Stalin sought stronger control over other Eastern Bloc
countries, abandoning the prior appearance of democratic
institutions.[140]
When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist
parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August
1947 Hungarian elections, repressions were instituted to liquidate
any independent political forces.[140]
In that same month, annihilation of the opposition in Bulgaria
began on the basis of continuing instructions by Soviet cadres.[140][141]
At a late September 1947 meeting of all communist parties in Szklarska
Poręba,[142]
Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even
minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries
during the run up to the Marshall Plan.[140]

Berlin blockade and
airlift

In former German capital Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-occupied Germany,
Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food,
materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin.[143] The
blockade was caused, in part, by early local elections of October
1946 in which the Socialist Unity Party of
Germany (SED) was rejected in favor of the Social Democratic
Party, which had gained two and a half times more votes than the
SED.[144]
The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift",
supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies.[145] The
Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the western
policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of
1948 preceding large losses therein,[146]
while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated urged the international
airlift to continue.[147] In
May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of
Western shipments to Berlin.[148][149]

Tito-Stalin
Split

After disagreements between Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito
and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and Albania, a Tito-Stalin split occurred, followed by
Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed
Soviet putsch in Belgrade.[4]
The split created two separate communist forces in Europe.[4]
A vehement campaign against Titoism was immediately started in the Eastern
Bloc, describing agents of both the West and Tito in all places
engaging in subversive activity.[4]

Stalin ordered the conversion of the Cominform into an instrument to monitor and
control internal affairs of other Eastern Bloc parties.[4]
He briefly considered also converting the Cominform into an
instrument for sentencing high-ranking deviators, but dropped the
idea as impractical.[4]
Instead, a move to weaken communist party leaders through conflict
was started.[4]
Soviet cadres in communist party and state positions in the Bloc
were instructed to foster intra-leadership conflict and to transmit
information against each other.[4]
This accompanied a continuous stream of accusations of
"nationalistic deviations", "insufficient appreciation of the
USSR's role", links with Tito and "espionage for Yugoslavia."[150]
This resulted in the persecution of many major party cadres,
including those in East Germany.[150]

The first country experiencing this approach was Albania, where
leader Enver Hoxha
immediately changed course from favoring Yugoslavia to opposing
it.[150]
In Poland, leader Władysław Gomułka, who had previously
made pro-Yugoslavian statements, was deposed as party
secretary-general in early September 1948 and subsequently
jailed.[150]
In Bulgaria, when it
appeared that Traicho Kostov, who was not a Moscow cadre, was next
in line for leadership, in June 1949, Stalin ordered Kostov's
arrest, followed soon thereafter by a death sentence and
execution.[150]
A number of other high ranking Bulgarian officials were also
jailed.[150]
Stalin and Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi met in Moscow to
orchestrate a show trial of Rákosi opponent László Rajk, who was
thereafter executed.[151]

Politics

Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented
by Joseph Stalin
in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across
countries.[152]
In satellite states, after peace treaties were initially concluded,
opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps toward
socialism were enforced and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen
control therein.[117]
Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western
institutional characteristics of market economies, democratic governance
(dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance)
and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the
state.[153]
The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center
backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a
central role of Marxist-Leninist
ideology.[153]

However, the vestiges of democratic institutions were never
entirely destroyed, resulting in the facade of Western style
institutions such as parliaments, which effectively just
rubber-stamped decisions made by rulers, and constitutions, to
which adherence by authorities was limited or non-existent.[153]
Parliaments were still elected, but their meetings occurred only a
few days per year, only to legitimize politburo decisions, and so
little attention was paid to them that some of those serving were
actually dead, and officials would openly state that they would
seat members who had lost elections.[154]
The first or General Secretary of the central committee in each communist party
was the most powerful figure in each regime.[155]
The party over which the politburo held sway was not a mass party but,
conforming with Leninist tradition, a smaller selective
party of between three and fourteen percent of the country's
population who had accepted total obedience.[156]
Those who secured membership in this selective party received
considerable rewards, such as access to special lower priced shops
with a greater selection of goods, special schools, holiday
facilities, homes, furniture, works of art and official cars with
special white license plates so that police and others could
identify these members from a distance.[156]

In addition to emigration restrictions, civil society, defined
as a domain of political action outside the party's state control,
was not allowed to firmly take root, with the possible exception of
Poland in the 1980s.[157]
While the institutional design on the communist systems were based
on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not
immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and the substitution
of autonomous law.[157]
Initially, communist parties were small in all countries except
Czechoslovakia, such that there existed an acute shortage of
politically "trustworthy" persons for administration, police and
other professions.[108]
Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill
such roles.[108]
Those not obedient to communist authorities were ousted, while
Moscow cadres started a large-scale party programs to train
personnel who would meet political requirements.[108]

Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of
opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases
underlying Communist power therein.[158]
The suppression of dissidence and opposition was considered a
central prerequisite to retain power, though the enormous expense
at which the population in certain countries were kept under secret
surveillance may not have been rational.[158]
Following a totalitarian initial phase, a post-totalitarian period
followed the death of Stalin in which the primary method of
Communist rule shifted from mass terror to selective repression,
along with ideological and sociopolitical strategies of
legitimation and the securing of loyalty.[159]
Juries were replaced by a tribunal of a professional judges and two
lay assessors that were dependable party actors.[160]

The police deterred and contained opposition to party
directives.[160]
The political police served as the core of the system, with their
names becoming synonymous with raw power and the threat of violent
retribution should an individual become active against the
collective.[160]
Several state police and secret police organizations enforced
communist party rule, including:

The press in the communist period was an organ of the state,
completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party.[161]
Before the late 1980s, Eastern Bloc radio and television
organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned
by political organizations, mostly by the local communist
party.[162]
Youth newspapers and magazines were owned by youth organizations
affiliated with communist parties.[162]
The control of the media was exercised directly by the communist
party itself, and by state censorship, which was also controlled by
the party.[162]
Media served as an important form of control over information and
society.[163]
The dissemination and portrayal of knowledge were considered by
authorities to be vital to communism's survival by stifling
alternative concepts and critiques.[163]
Several state Communist Party newspapers were published,
including:

Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters
which enabled services such as the BBC, VOA and Radio Free Europe
(RFE) to be heard in the Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by
authorities to jam the airways.

Organizations

In 1949, the Soviet
Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded the Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to
enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe
and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan,[164][165]
and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional
markets and suppliers in Western Europe.[139]
The Comecon's role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more
direct links with other party chiefs than the Comecon's indirect
sophistication; it played no significant role in the 1950s in
economic planning.[166]
Initially, the Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of
materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the
balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest
of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials
in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.[167]

In 1955, the Warsaw
Pact was formed partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany and partly because the
Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in Hungary.[165]
For 35 years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet
national security based on imperial expansion and control over
satellite regimes in Eastern Europe.[168]
This Soviet formalization of their security relationships in the
Eastern Bloc reflected Moscow's basic security policy principle
that continued presence in East Central Europe was a foundation of
its defense against the West.[168]
Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated in
part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership since
his death in 1953.[168]
The Pact consolidated the other Bloc members' armies in which
Soviet officers and security agents served under a unified Soviet
command structure.[169]
Beginning in 1964, Romania took a more independent course.[170]
While it did not repudiate either Comecon or the Warsaw Pact, it
ceased to play a significant role in either.[170]Nicolae
Ceauşescu's assumption of leadership one year later pushed
Romania even further in the direction of separateness.[170]
Albania, which had become increasingly isolated under Stalinst
leader Enver Hoxha
following de-Stalinization, withdrew from the
Warsaw Pact in 1968[171]
following the Warsaw Pact invasion
of Czechoslovakia.[172]

In 1917, Russia restricted emigration by instituting passport controls
and forbidding the exit of belligerent nationals.[173]
In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation
of the USSR, both the Ukrainian SSR and the
Russian SFSR issued general rules for
travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal
emigration impossible.[174]
Border controls thereafter strengthened such that, by 1928, even
illegal departure was effectively impossible.[174]
This later included internal passport
controls, which when combined with individual city Propiska ("place of
residence") permits, and internal freedom of movement restrictions
often called the 101st kilometre, greatly restricted
mobility within even small areas of the Soviet Union.[175]

After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, emigration out of the
newly occupied countries, except under limited circumstances, was
effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to
controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the
Eastern Bloc.[176]
However, in East
Germany, taking advantage of the Inner German border between
occupied zones, hundreds of thousands fled to West Germany, with
figures totaling 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952
and 331,000 in 1953.[177][178]
One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential
further Sovietization with the increasingly
paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early
1953.[179]
226,000 had fled in the just the first six months of 1953.[180]
With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952,[181]
the Berlin city sector borders remained considerably more
accessible than the rest of the border because of their
administration by all four occupying powers.[182]
Accordingly, it effectively comprised a "loophole" through which
Eastern Bloc citizens could still move west.[181]
The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961, called Republikflucht,
totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.[183]
In August 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that
would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall,
effectively closing the loophole.[184]

With virtually non-existent conventional emigration, more than
75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950
and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic
migration."[185]
About 10% were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of
1951.[185]
Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic
Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing
defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic
emigrations.[186] The
fall of the Iron
Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West
migration.[185]
Famous Eastern Bloc
defectors included Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana
Alliluyeva, who denounced Stalin after her 1967 defection.[187]

Economies

A Trabant 601 Limousine.
Trabants were manufactured in East Germany between 1957 and 1991, and
exported throughout the Eastern Bloc

The Eastern Bloc depended upon the Soviet Union for significant
amounts of materials.[188]
Because of the lack of market signals in such economies, they
experienced mis-development by central planners resulting in those
countries following a path of extensive rather than intensive
development.[188]
Consumer goods were lacking in quantity and quality in the shortage
economies that resulted.[189]
Economic activity was governed by Five Year Plans, divided
into monthly segments with government planners frequently
attempting to meet plan targets regardless of whether markets
existed for the goods being produced.[190]
Growth rates within the bloc began to decline.[191]

Meanwhile, Western Germany, Austria, France and other Western
European nations experienced increased economic growth in the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic
miracle") Trente Glorieuses ("thirty glorious
years") and the post-World War
II boom. Overall, the inefficiency of systems without
competition or market-clearing prices became costly and
unsustainable, especially with the increasing complexity of world
economics.[192]
While most western European economies essentially caught up in
large part with the United States levels of per capitaGross Domestic
Product (GDP), the Eastern Bloc countries did not.[191]
They possessed per capita GDPs significantly below their comparable
western European counterparts,[193]
for example (Eastern bloc countries are in green):

Their economic systems, which required party-state planning at
all levels, ended up collapsing under the weight of accumulated
economic inefficiencies, with various attempts at reform merely
contributing to the acceleration of crisis-generating
tendencies.[197]

Revolts

1953
East Germany uprising

Three months after the death of Joseph Stalin, a dramatic increase of
emigration (Republikflucht, brain drain) occurred from East Germany in the
first half-year of 1953. Large numbers of East Germans traveled
west through the only "loophole" left in the Eastern Bloc
emigration restrictions, the Berlin sector border.[198]
The East German government then raised "norms" – the amount each
worker was required to produce—by 10%.[198]
Already disaffected East Germans, who could see the relative
economic successes of West Germany within Berlin, became
enraged.[198]
Angry building workers initiated street protests, and were soon
joined by others in a march to the Berlin trade union
headquarters.[198]
While no official spoke to them at that location, by 2:00 p.m., the
East German government agreed to withdraw the "norm" increases.[199]
However, the crisis had already escalated such that the demands
were now political, including free elections, disbanding the army
and resignation of the government.[199]
By June 17, strikes were recorded in 317 locations involving
approximately 400,000 workers.[199]
When strikers set ruling SED party buildings
aflame and tore the flag from the Brandenburg Gate, SED General
SecretaryWalter Ulbricht left Berlin.[199]

A major emergency was delared and the Soviet Red Army stormed some important buildings.[199]
With hours, Soviet tanks arrived, but they did not immediately fire
upon all workers.[199]
Rather, a gradual pressure was applied.[199]
Approximately 16 Soviet divisions with 20,000 soldiers from the Group of Soviet Forces in
Germany using tanks, as well as 8,000 Kasernierte Volkspolizei
members, were employed. Bloodshed could not be entirely avoided,
with the official death toll standing at 21, while the actual
casualty toll may have been much higher.[199]
Thereafter, 20,000 arrests took place along with 40 executions.[199]

Hungarian Revolution of
1956

After Stalin's 1953 death, a period of de-Stalinization followed, with
reformist Imre Nagy
replacing Hungarian Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi.[200]
Responding to popular demand, in October 1956, the government
appointed the recently rehabilitated reformist Władysław Gomułka as First Secretary
of the Polish United Workers'
Party, with a mandate to negotiate trade concessions and troop
reductions with the Soviet government. After a few tense days of
negotiations, on October 19, the Soviets finally gave in to
Gomułka's reformist requests.[201]

The revolution began after students of the Technical
University compiled a list of Demands of
Hungarian Revolutionaries of 1956 and conducted protests in
support of the demands on October 22.[202]
Protests of support swelled to 200,000 by 6 p.m. the following
day,[203][204]
The demands included free secret ballot elections, independent
tribunals, inquiries into Stalin and Rákosi Hungarian activities
and that "the statue of Stalin, symbol of Stalinist tyranny and
political oppression, be removed as quickly as possible." By 9:30
p.m. the statue was toppled (see photo to the right) and jubilant
crowds celebrated by placing Hungarian flags in Stalin's boots,
which was all that remained the statue.[204]
The ÁVH was called, Hungarian soldiers sided with the crowd over
the ÁVH and shots were fired on the crowd.[205][206]

By 2 a.m. on 24 October, under orders of Soviet defense minister
Georgy Zhukov,
Soviet tanks entered Budapest.[207]
Protester attacks at the Parliament forced the collapse of the
government.[208] A
ceasefire was arranged on October 28, and by October 30 most Soviet
troops had withdrawn from Budapest to garrisons in the Hungarian
countryside.[209]
Fighting had virtually ceased between October 28 and November 4,
while many Hungarians believed that Soviet military units were
indeed withdrawing from Hungary.[210]

The new government that came to power during the revolution
formally disbanded ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw
from the Warsaw Pact
and pledged to re-establish free elections. The
Soviet Politburo thereafter moved to crush the revolution. On 4
November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions
of the country.[211]
The last pocket of resistance
called for ceasefire on 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 722
Soviet troops were killed and thousands more were wounded.[212][213]
Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported to
the Soviet Union, many without evidence.[214]
Approximately 200,000 Hungarians fled Hungary,[215]
some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the new
Soviet-installed János Kádár government, and of those,
13,000 were imprisoned.[216]
Imre Nagy was executed, along with Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes, after secret
trials in June 1958. Their bodies were placed in unmarked graves in
the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest.[217]
By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed
all public opposition.

Prague
Spring and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia

A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia
called the Prague
Spring took place in 1968. The event was spurred by several
events, including economic reforms that addressed an early 1960s
economic downturn.[218][219]
The event began on January 5, 1968, when reformist Slovak Alexander
Dubček came to power. In April, Dubček launched an "Action Program" of
liberalizations, which included increasing freedom of the press,
freedom of speech and freedom of movement, along with an economic
emphasis on consumer goods, the possibility of a
multiparty government and limiting the power of the secret
police.[220][221]

Initial reaction within the Eastern Bloc was mixed, with Hungary's János
Kádár expressing support, while Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
and others grew concerned about Dubček's reforms, which they feared
might weaken the Eastern Bloc's position during the Cold War.[222][223] On
August 3, representatives from the Soviet Union, East Germany,
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia met in Bratislava and signed the
Bratislava Declaration, which affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian
internationalism and declared an implacable struggle against
"bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces.[224]

On the night of August 20–21, 1968, Eastern Bloc armies from
four Warsaw Pact countries — the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary—invaded
Czechoslovakia.[225][226]
The invasion comported with the Brezhnev Doctrine, a policy of
compelling Eastern Bloc states to subordinate national interests to
those of the Bloc as a whole and the exercise of a Soviet right to
intervene if an Eastern Bloc country appeared to shift towards
capitalism .[227][228] The
invasion was followed by a wave of emigration, including an
estimated 70,000 Czechs initially fleeing, with the total
eventually reaching 300,000.[229] In
April 1969, Dubček was replaced as first secretary by Gustáv
Husák, and a period of "normalization"
began.[230]
Husák reversed Dubček's reforms, purged the party of liberal
members, dismissed opponents from public office, reinstated the
power of the police authorities, sought to re-centralize the
economy and re-instated the disallowance of political commentary in
mainstream media and by persons not considered to have "full
political trust".[231][232]

During the late 1980s, the weakened Soviet Union gradually
stopped interfering in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc
nations. Following the Brezhnev stagnation, reform-minded
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 signaled
the trend toward greater liberalization. Mikhail
Gorbachev's abrogation of the Brezhnev Doctrine,[233]
which held that if socialism were threatened in any state then
other socialist governments had an obligation to intervene to
preserve it, in favor of the so-called "Sinatra Doctrine" had dramatic effects
across Central and Eastern Europe during this period. Gorbachev
launched a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union,
and emphasized the need for perestroika (economic restructuring).
A wave of Revolutions of 1989, sometimes
called the "Autumn of Nations",[234]
swept across the Eastern Bloc.[235]

Major reforms occurred in Hungary following the
replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the
Communist Party in 1988.[236]
In Poland in April 1989, the
Solidarity organization was legalized,
allowed to participate in parliamentary elections and captured a
stunning 99% of available parliamentary seats.[237]
On November 9, 1989, following mass protests in East Germany and the
relaxing of border restrictions in Czechoslovakia, tens of
thousands of Eastern Berliners flooded checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, crossing
into West Berlin.[238]
In Bulgaria, the day after
the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall, leader Todor Zhivkov was
ousted by his Politburo and replaced with Petar Mladenov.[239]
In Czechoslovakia,
following protests of an estimated half-million Czechs demanding
freedoms and a general strike, the authorities, which
had caved to pressure to allow travel to the west, abolished
provisions guaranteeing the ruling Communist party its leading
role.[240]
President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely
non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and
resigned, in what was called the Velvet Revolution.[240]
In Romania, which had never undergone even
limited de-Stalinization, following unrest,
leader Nicolae Ceauşescu ordered a mass
rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in
Bucharest. But mass protests against Ceauşescu proceeded.[241]
The Romanian military sided with protesters, turning on Ceauşescu,
who was executed after a brief trial three days later.[242]

Even before the Bloc's last years, all of the countries in the
Warsaw Pact did not always act as a unified bloc. For instance, the
1968 invasion of
Czechoslovakia was condemned by Romania, which refused to take part in
it.

Other
countries

East German border guards look through a destroyed section of the
Berlin Wall in
1990

Use of the term "Eastern Bloc" generally refers to the
"communist states of eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia and
Albania, as well as the countries of the Warsaw Pact."[243][244]
Sometimes, more generally, they are referred to as "the countries
of Eastern Europe under communism".[245][246]
Eastern Bloc was also used interchangingly with the term Second World, and was
opposed by the Western
Bloc. The members of the Eastern Bloc besides the Soviet Union
are often referred to as "satellite states"
of the Soviet Union.[44
][45][46][247][248][249][250][251][252][253]

^
Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as
a "crime against revolution" Gustaw
Herling-Grudzinski, A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet
Labor Camp During World War II, 1996, page 284, Penguin Books, ISBN
0-14-025184-7 and "counter-revolutionary activity",(Polish)Wladyslaw Anders, Bez ostatniego
rozdzialu, 1995, page 540, Test, ISBN 83-7038-168-5 and
subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish
citizens.

^
Furthermore, the Latvian results are known to be complete
fabrications, having been accidentally released to the press in
London and published a day ahead of schedule. Visvaldis, Mangulis,
Latvia in the Wars of the 20th century, 1983, Princeton
Junction: Cognition Books, isbn=0912881003, Chapter=VIII. September
1939 to June 1941; Švābe, Arvīds. The Story of Latvia.
Latvian National Foundation. Stockholm. 1949. Feldbrugge, Ferdinand
et al., Encyclopedia of Soviet Law, 1985, Brill,
isbn 9024730759, page 460

^ abc
February 11, 1945 Potsdam Report, reprinted in Potsdam
Ashley, John, Soames Grenville and Bernard Wasserstein, The
Major International Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History
and Guide with Texts, Taylor & Francis, 2001 ISBN
041523798X

^
Beevor, Antony, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Penguin Books,
2002, ISBN 0-670-88695-5. Specific reports also include Report of the Swiss legation
in Budapest of 1945 and Hubertus Knabe: Tag der Befreiung? Das
Kriegsende in Ostdeutschland (A day of liberation? The end of war
in East Germany), Propyläen 2005, ISBN 3549072457 German).

^
Schissler, Hanna The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West
Germany, 1949–1968

^
When members of the Socialist Unity Party of
Germany (SED) reported to Stalin that looting and rapes by
Soviet soldiers could result in negative consequences for the
future of socialism in post-war East Germany, Stalin reacted
angrily: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honor of the
Red Army through the mud." (Wolfgang Leonhard, Child of the
Revolution ,Pathfinder Press, 1979, ISBN 0-906133-26-2

^
Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the
Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Harvard University
Press, 1995. ISBN 0-674-78405-7) Accordingly, all evidence of
looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from
archives in the Soviet occupation zone.(Wolfgang
Leonhard, Child of the Revolution, Pathfinder Press,
1979, ISBN 0-906133-26-2.)

^
The political process contrasted with that in western German zones
occupied by Britain, France and the United States, where
minister-presidents were chosen by freely elected parliamentary
assemblies. (Turner, Henry Ashby The Two Germanies Since 1945:
East and West, Yale University Press, 1987, isbn 0300038658,
page 20)

^
In a congratulatory telegram, Stalin emphasized that, with the
creation of East Germany, the "enslavement of European countries by
the global imperialists was rendered impossible." (Wettig, Gerhard,
Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman &&
Littlefield, 2008, isbn=0742555429, page 179)

^Gati, Charles (September 2006). Failed
Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian
Revolt. Stanford University Press. ISBN
0-8047-5606-6. (page 49). Gati
describes "the most gruesome forms of psychological and physical
torture...The reign of terror (by the Rákosi government) turned out
to be harsher and more extensive than it was in any of the other
Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe." He further
references a report prepared after the collapse of communism, the
Fact Finding Commission Torvenytelen szocializmus (Lawless
Socialism): "Between 1950 and early 1953, the courts dealt with
650,000 cases (of political crimes), of whom 387,000 or 4 percent
of the population were found guilty. (Budapest, Zrinyi Kiado/Uj
Magyarorszag, 1991, 154).

^ Ello (ed.), Paul (April 1968).
Control Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, "Action
Plan of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Prague, April 1968)"
in Dubcek’s Blueprint for Freedom: His original documents
leading to the invasion of Czechoslovakia. William Kimber
& Co. 1968, pp 32, 54

^ E. Szafarz, "The
Legal Framework for Political Cooperation in Europe" in The
Changing Political Structure of Europe: Aspects of International
Law, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-1379-8. p.221.

Photographic project "Eastern
Bloc" “Eastern Bloc” examines the specificities and differences
of living in totalitarian and post totalitarian countries. The
project is divided into chapters, each dedicated to one of the
Eastern European countries—Slovak Republic, Poland, ex-GDR, Hungary, Czech Republic and
ex-Yugoslavia.

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The term Eastern Bloc referred to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960 respectively.

Communist governments were initially installed in a Bloc politics process that included extensive political and media controls, along with a Soviet approach to restricting emigration. Events such as the Tito-Stalin split and Berlin Blockade prompted stricter control. While the Bloc persisted through revolts, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, its command economies experienced inefficiencies and stagnation preceding the Bloc's dissolution.

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Photographic project "Eastern bloc" “Eastern Bloc” examines the specificities and differences of living in totalitarian and post totalitarian countries. The project is divided into chapters, each dedicated to one of the Eastern European countries – Slovak Republic, Poland, ex GDR, Hungary, Czech Republic and ex Yugoslavia.